Felipe Contreras

I’ve read similar stories but the actual position in Amazon.com was different. Now the positions are quite good.

Here you can see that the N800 is #1 and the N810 is #5.

I guess we must be doing something good

ars technica has a comprehensive review of the N810, and it’s positive

Like the N800, the N810 delivers one of the best experiences in mobile web browsing on the market. The new browser that ships with OS2008 is truly outstanding, and most of the rest of OS2008 is pretty darn impressive too. For Linux enthusiasts as well as regular users, Nokia’s Maemo-based software platform offers power, flexibility, and ease of use.

Read the rest of this entry »

Phew, I have quite a lot of links to post this time.

• Map: Welcome to the Blogosphere
  A very interesting map of the blogosphere, with a nice analysis. I just hope I could find myself
  (tags: article blogosphere web2.0 interesting)
• Mathematician suggests extra dimensions are time-like
  George Sparling says “My approach is bottom up: take the existing four-dimensional theory seriously and try to build up from it. This is very tough to do. Hopefully my ideas work. Note that my work only constitutes a possible beginning at a more inclusive theory.”
  This makes much more sense to me.
  (tags: interesting article science physics)
• SPACE.com: Out-of-This-World Hypothesis: Cosmic Forces Control Life on Earth
  I hope we are not near that 64 million cycle where we are no the cosmic north receiving those bow shock waves… weird.
  (tags: article evolution interesting science space)
• xkcd: Conspiracy Theories
  Great one!
  (tags: comics funny humor)
• Nanoscale ‘Coaxial Cables’ for Solar Energy Harvesting
  (tags: research nanotechnology environment article
  interesting)
• Next-generation, high-performance processor unveiled | Science Blog
  These babies process 16 instructions per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions in flight simultaneously.
  (tags: article future technology hardware)
• New project: Empathy
  Go Telepathy clients!
  (tags: gnome desktop instant.messaging)
• Axl Library (Another XML Library), XML Library, XML, XML Software, XML Parser
  Competition is good, specially since I have not found an XML Library that I really like.
  (tags: xml open.source library software.development)
• Computerworld – AI will surpass human intelligence after 2020
  Interesting article about the future. A little far-fetched, but great ideas.
  (tags: ai article future world web2.0 technology fiction)
• Conduit 0.3.0
  Sync/Export/Backup Flickr, Tomboy, iPod, gnomevfs, FSpot. Very interesting project.
• buzztard 0.2 sunrise is out
  The buzztard team has release version 0.2 “sunrise” of its buzz-alike music composer.
• A Guided Tour of Hotwire 0.333
  Hotwire is an innovative way of working with the “command line”, bash is so passé.
• xkcd: Online Communities
  Another great one from xkcd! A very funny map of the Internet.
• What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
  Noam Chomsky on “the Iran Effect”. Interesting points.
  (tags: politics war society article)

I always have said that I like Ruby much more than Python, but I really have not tried Python that much.

Here I’m going to port my twitter library from Ruby to Python and write down the things I find out.

Resulting code in Python:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import twitter
c = twitter.Connection("myuser", "mypassword")
c.status.update("mymessage")


Resulting code in Ruby:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'twitter'
c = Twitter::Connection.new("myuser", "mypassword")
c.status.update("mymessage")


I preffer “Mod::Class” syntax over “mod.Class”. That’s possible due to extensible module syntax in Ruby, where you can have different modules in the same file.

Twitter module in Python:

import rest
class Connection:
url = "https://twitter.com"
def __init__(self, username = None, password = None):
self.conn = rest.Connection(self.url, username, password)
self.status = Status(self.conn)
class Status:
def __init__(self, conn):
self.conn = conn
def update(self, message):
res = self.conn.request_post("statuses/update.xml", {"status": message})


Hell, where do I start?

• __init__: I don’t like to type __whatever__
• self on every function: I don’t like this either, can’t it just be assumed?
• self.var: I like Ruby’s @var much better
• None: I prefer nil, nul, or whatever

Twitter module in Ruby:

require 'rest'
module Twitter
URL = "https://twitter.com/"
class Connection
def initialize(username, password)
@conn = REST::Connection.new(URL, :username => username, :password => password)
@status = Status.new(@conn)
end
attr_reader :status
end
class Status
def initialize(conn)
@conn = conn
end
def update(message)
res = @conn.request_post("statuses/update.xml", :status => message)
end
end
end


• I can define the module, or modules
• I can send hash tables as function arguments without {}’s, just :k => v
• I can even specify that I want the status variable to be read only very easily with attr_reader

Some other things I don’t like about Python:

In Ruby, since everything is an object, so is an URL, and the URL object can be passed along a lot of functions very easily, and its members can be modified, so I can change que query part of it any time I want, that’s not possible with Python’s urlparse object.

Who thought “?”.join(array) was a good idea? In Ruby you do the same as array.join(“?”).

Arrays and Hashes work in weird ways, for example:

foo = {}
print foo["bar"]


That makes Ptyhon pop, while in Ruby you simply get nil, that makes programming with Hashes so much easier. For example: v = foo["bar"]; if v….

Also, if you try ” “.join(“foo”, None]) Python would crash, while Ruby’s ["foo", nil].join(” “) will not.

For web2.0 stuff HTTP Basic Authorization is, well, basic. In Python you either have to implement it yourself, or try urllib2’s API which I don’t understand yet.

Oh, and there is no switch/case statement.

You can check side by side both versions of the code:

• REST: Python – Ruby
• Twitter: Python – Ruby

So, I still love Ruby

• The Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks
  Benchmarks for different languages for certain specific tasks. Great idea!
• Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FOSS, or FLOSS)? Look at the Numbers!
  Extensive research paper about why Open Source Software is a good idea
• Pipes: Last.fm Recent Tracks Youtube
  An interesting Yahoo! Pipe that lists a bunch of YouYube videos of the music I like as last.fm says
• Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 Is About Controlling Data
  Web2.0 is about contrilling data; that’s the best explanation (only?) I’ve heard. An article worth reading.

I just got my shinny new FC6, and I didn’t find a fool proof way to install Ruby on Rails, so here it goes.

First install the following packages:

• ruby: The Ruby interpreter.
• ruby-libs: Necessary to run Ruby.
• ruby-devel: If you plan to build an extension or an application embedding Ruby.
• ruby-rdoc: Generates Ruby documentation.
• ruby-mysql: MySQL API module for Ruby.
• ruby-irb: Interactive Ruby, so you can use it from the terminal

Fedora doesn’t come with Ruby on Rails, so you will need to install it manually. The best way to do that is with RubyGems, but Fedora doesn’t come with that either, so you will need to install it first.

The process is explained in here.

Download RubyGems from here.

Extract, and then as root:
ruby setup.rb

You’ll get:
Successfully built RubyGem

Now that you have RubyGems, you can install Ruby:
gem install rails --include-dependencies

You’ll see (among other things):
Successfully installed rails-[version]

Note: If you don’t have rdoc you’ll see the following non-fatal error:
no such file to load -- rdoc/rdoc (LoadError)

That’s it, now if you want to try it:
rails testapp
cd testapp
ruby script/server


Go to http://0.0.0.0:3000/ to see it in action

You can also check:

• Installing Ruby on Rails with lighttpd and MySQL on Fedora Core 4
• Getting Started With Rails

Thanks to LUG Paraná I found out this neat journaling client for GNOME called Drivel.

So far it has everything I need… multiple categories would be a nice addition though.

I hope my blogging speed improves with this tool.

MSNBC has an interesting article about WoW.

It makes many good points, and it mentions many crazy things I didn’t know; weddings, marches, funerals (in the game but real people died), slaughters in funerals, people gathering gold and selling it in real life, executives closing deals inside the game. The thing that impressed me the most is a girl that died of exhaustion after playing for almost a week without rest… that is absolutely wicked.

Edward Castronova mentions that “In 20 or 30 years the technology will be here to create incredibly more realistic and immersive worlds”. If video games have about 30 years, and information technology is growing exponentially, I have no idea on the things we might see by that time.

These are one of my favourite quotes:

“Yes, it’s just a game (WoW), The way that the real world is a game.” — Joi Ito (Level 60, Gnome Mage, Venture Capitalist)

“Warcraft is the new golf” — Ross Mayfield (Level 60, Human Palladin, CEO of an Internet company)

It has happened some time since my last post, but I want to continue bloging, so where is the my second post about Web 2.0 for the joe user.

My second example is del.icio.us, a simple, elegant, and sexy way to store your bookmarks, but it’s much more than that. It has tags for starters, that means that you can organize them in anyway you want. Not only you can organize your links that way, you can also share them with all your friends. For example, you can see all my links here and you can check all my links I consider funny here.

Not only that, if your friends use del.icio.us too you can send them links, and they can send links to you too. But there’s more, if you find the links of somebody interesting you can add that person to your network and each time they save a link, you can see it. You can see my network here.

If that isn’t enough for you there’s also the main page, where you can see the latest links of all the people. Even more, there is a popular page where you can see the top links.

Moreover, if you are an RSS fan, you can receive updates of each and every one of the sub-sites I have already mentioned. If you don’t know what’s that, then wait for my next post or go check it out in Wikipedia

del.icio.us has a lot of great features (much more than the ones I have mentioned here), but the simple fact that it allows you to store your bookmarks so easily is enough to make it one of the best sites in the net. You might want to check out this screencast provided by Jon Udell.

I hope you find this useful

Have you ever thought that maybe somewhere in the world something new and exciting is happening but you just have no way to know it? Well, maybe that’s true, and maybe that thing is Web 2.0, it just might.

There is a lot of fuzz about Web 2.0, most people haven’t even heard about it while some others are sick of it. This post is intended for the former ones.

Despite of all the information available there isn’t a good way to describe it, as there is no easy way to describe a revolution, and anyway most people wouldn’t want an explanation, but instead “see” it. So that’s what I’m going to try here, to “show” it.

My first example will be Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is not like any encyclopedia, it has two key features: it’s online, and it’s open. That means anyone from anywhere can create or edit entries. At first instance it looks like an utopian idea, but the fact is that it works surprisingly well.

From quantum mechanics, to the omnipotence paradox, to the kama-sutra; Wikipedia has it all, in a condensed, friendly, complete, referenced and fancy way, with links to hundreads of related topics, you can’t ask for more. Well, maybe translations to other languages, but it’s slowly getting there.

If you don’t believe me just try to find information about an important icon in the history of your country, as Benito Juarez, or the exact definition and history of the word Negro, or random stuff about The Da Vinci Code and the history of the Holy Grail.

If you find any mistake just create an account and fix it, that way you’ll be helping to build this knowledge database, but the odds is that you’ll get much more information than what you put. In short: share the knowledge.

The essence of Wikipedia is Wikimedia, and in general: Wiki’s. Wiki’s are a way to share knowledge, anyone can put stuff, anyone can see it, and anyone can see the exact changes from one version to another of the same entry. Think of it as a dynamically shared dictionary in a blackboard, or something like that.

Unfortunately as The Matrix, you cannot really be told what a Wiki is, you have to see it for yourself, and the first step would be to use Wikipedia, so take the red pill and see it for yourself.

And btw, Wikipedia is part of the Wikimedia Foundation. Do you want to check some Oscar Wilde quotes? check Wikiquote. Do you want to learn how to play chess or do lucid dreaming? check Wikibooks.